Mültecilerle Dayanışma Derneği

Source: ECRE

A four-day long spat between Italy and Malta on the destination of 140 migrants rescued by a Turkish-owned ship in the Mediterranean was drawn to a close on Monday 20 April 2009 as the migrants were accepted by Italy for humanitarian reasons. On Thursday 16 April, the freighter Pinar picked up the migrants 41 nautical miles from the Italian island of Lampedusa and 114 nautical miles from Malta.

Nearly more than 18 thousand refugees in Turkey will be deprived of the medical aids as of 2009 that they have been barely utilizing.

Although the Primer Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said that “There will be no one left that is not covered by the General Health Insurance (GSS) in Turkey including the stateless and the asylum-seekers”, things didn’t turn out to be as he stated. Since a confusion of authority arose due to GSS that came into force in 2008, the fate of the asylum-seekers is left to the discretion of social solidarity and contribution associations in the provinces.

News source:http://www.haberler.com/multeci-ve-siginmaci-nufus-en-fazla-istanbul-da-haberi/

According to official records from the General Staff concerning illegal border crossings, the number of foreign people who fail to fulfill legal requirements and who were caught while crossing the border illegally is 1.253.

Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq rank the first three among the country of asylum seekers in Turkey with respect to their nationalities. According to the 2008 data, the provinces with highest number of refugee and asylum seeker population are Istanbul, Van, Gaziantep, Kayseri and Konya.

Last week’s uprising of men, women and children awaiting deportation has drawn attention to a group of foreigners in Turkey whose varied and pressing issues are often ignored by the Turkish public and media alike. They come to Turkey seeking refuge and are all too often met by a reflection of the conditions that led them to leave their homes.